Exploring What’s New in the ServiceNow Zurich Release

It is now official; ServiceNow has released their Zurich version, and it arrives at a scale of change that is hard to overlook. The ServiceNow Zurich Release was put into early availability on July 31st, 2025, and took on general availability on September 10th, 2025. From brand new products to deeply enhanced developer tools, the launch states some of the capabilities of Zurich include hyper-intelligent hybrid workflows, flexible, scalable, AI-powered app dev and advanced security for the age of innovation. In short – this is not a minor version bump – Zurich is a move for organizations, and developers, and for the businesses users as well, it’s a significant move.

Setting the Scene with ServiceNow Zurich Release

Think about running an enterprise platform with dozens of teams building applications, automating processes, managing service desks, field tracking, and securely supplier data across departments. In that space, you are starting to feel the pressure: non-IT teams want to build apps faster; automation pipelines are creaking under scale; AI opportunities lie just the corner, yet few organizations have fully embraced; and the dashboard of instance performance is more of a black box than the tool it should be. Into that environment steps Zurich.

ServiceNow recognized the moment the platform needed to scale its capabilities from “just configurable workflows” to “intelligent, low-code arms for every team, with governance.” The Zurich update addresses these pressures while attempting to close the distance between “IT builds it” and “business teams own it,” all while maintaining the robustness, security and scale aspects of the platform.

Key Highlights

Developer and App-Build Experience

Zurich delivers developer sandboxes, where every building team can work alone, limiting the potential for conflict and improving the safety of collaboration. App Engine Management Center provides governance, visibility and control over the low-code app development, allowing teams to have speed in building while maintaining a centralized oversight. Workflow design also receives enhancements: for example, you can create sub flows from sketches and inspect flow histories, with the ability to reuse triggers and configure your preferred LLM (large language model) for certain actions.

AI-Driven Capabilities

The AI features are significant. The set of features around Now Assist is expanding, translations in multiple languages, voice input, context aware responses providing citations, and the ability to draw on multiple model-providers (Gemini, Claude, Azure OpenAI), to name a few. The idea is to incorporate intelligent support into workflows and behave like everyday apps, not just a “new feature.” On the workflow side, “Workflow Data Fabric” will help usher in data from a range of systems to automate things without heavy manual integration.

Mobile, UX & Platform Performance

Zurich has a distinct focus on experience: improved mobile-app builders, support for non-sequential forms, local storage of photos/videos, sliders, and improved error-handling in mobile. Also, platform performance has got more visibility; tools like Performance Analyzer, surfaced page-load times, widget issues, so admins/developers can pinpoint bottlenecks and optimize performance.

Governance, Security & Industry Width

On the governance side, the new Release Ops application provides structured pipelines, quality gates and deployment transparency, critical for larger organizations with many apps and many teams. In terms of security and identity, there are enhancements around MFA dashboards, machine-identity console for inbound integrations, and domain separation enhancements. Also, importantly, Zurich doesn’t neglect Industry depth modules for Financial Services, Healthcare, Manufacturing, etc., come with deeper built-in assistance.

Why this is important

For ServiceNow instance management, Zurich enables the shift from reactive service-management (ticketing, workflows) to proactive, intelligent, business-focused automation. Business users see expedited app delivery; developer teams get more sophisticated tools, IT gains enhanced governance and security and, ideally, end users experience a smoother UX and higher quality of service.

Conclusion

Before you click “Upgrade”, make sure to carry out the necessary planning. Think about the customizations and integrations how they will function, perform the suitable due diligence with regards to custom workflows through a sandbox, determine some before/after benchmarks, prepare the teams (business and IT) regarding new features and additional governance, and plan a phased rollout (pilot phase and the larger rollout) etc. Overall, the ServiceNow Zurich release is not simply a minor release — it is a strategic leap. If you are thinking through the adoption process, you will fundamentally change how your teams build, automate, and deliver. Plus, you are doing this at a point in time when the platform can now handle more scale, more intelligence, and more autonomy than ever before. So, stay ahead – your ServiceNow journey just became more powerful.